Wednesday, June 29, 2016

The High Cost Of Liberal Living

The Chronicle notes that last year, just six miles away from North Beach in Bernal Heights, tenant Deb Follingstad made headlines when she posted a notice from her landlord on Facebook indicating that her rent had leapt from $2,145 to $8,900.

Renters aren’t the only ones experiencing the woes of San Francisco’s gentrification. The long battle between the city and multi-billion dollar short-term rentals startup Airbnb continues to rage. According to TechCrunch, on Monday, Airbnb filed suit against San Francisco to block a new ordinance, which would require the company to verify that its hosts have registered with the city before showing ads for their homes online, from going into effect on August 1.

The city is reportedly attempting to make Airbnb go through the rigorous registration and quarterly process in order to find out which commercial renters are taking their properties off of the housing market and listing them exclusively on the short-term rentals startup. Homeowners are able to make more money that way, but the city wants to stop them from doing it to preserve housing stock.